People ask me:
where is home?

Last time I saw my village
it was burning
in the night.

My house, a screaming
mouth
of firehot fear
in the mask of darkness.

My only thought was flight.

Nobody here understands my language, so
I speak the tongue of compromise.
The grateful grammar
of being alive.

This is my certainty, my identity.

People ask me, where is home?
I say
home is where the heart is.

At night I watch the stars:
distant villages, all aflame,
terrified angels, running away.
© Phillippa Yaa de Villiers

Via Poefrika

This poem has a special meaning for me as I grew up in Nigeria being called “half-caste” and always despised the word and refused to acknowledge the term. Even today I meet Nigerians who continue to use the term either as a way of describing themselves or others leaving me cringing. The poem makes a mockery of the term “half”,

“half head half ear, half foot…….”half-caste” “coloured” “mixed race” “quarter-caste” “yellow” “high yellow” “low yellow” “red” “mulatto”, “quadroon” - how about just plain simple “Black”!

Excuse me
standing on one leg
I’m half-caste

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather/
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem dont want de sun pass
ah rass/
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony/

Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah lookin at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
and when I’m introduced to yu
I’m sure you’ll
understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind

an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story
© John Agard

Listen to John Agard read the poem

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John Agard
Caribbean + Poetry
half-caste

So many years, so much faith, Hu,
and the sun shining through its lens
to etch truth into the books.

I hold a mirror to my face, looking at
my life from the world’s arched back.

Steel rods fill the mandala of my dreams,
bars that won’t let me leap over the Great Wall
to the place of gods on Mount Gephel,

where monks fire the streets of the town
I was born in, as I, Jamyang, wait for

somebody to bring a blanket
to this floor, some writing pads,
a pencil, so I can take poems home with me

when one day on the midnight train
bound for Lhasa I set foot again.
© Rethabile Masilo

Jamyang Kyi is a Tibetan singer, song-writer, journalist, who on the 1st of April was jailed by Chinese authorities. Protest poems is asking poets to write something against the action taken by China’s leaders, something for the release of Jamyang. Please visit protestpoems.org for more information. And if you haven’t already done so, bookmark them and visit regularly to see what unfairly treated journalist or artist the community is supporting.

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Mazisi Raymond Kunene was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1930 [12th of May]. He graduated from the University of Natal with a paper on traditional and modern Zulu poetry. In 1959 he obtained a grant to complete his doctoral dissertation in London.

From this point on Kunene dedicated himself to the struggle for freedom of African countries. He worked for institutions such as the Afro-Asian Writers Committee and founded the South African Vocational Programme for refugees in Tanzania and Zambia.

In 1966 he was officially banned from his home country along with 45 other authors. He was one of the founding members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement and became Chief Representative for the African National Congress in Europe and USA in 1962.

Kunene received support from notables such as Picasso, Chagall, Giacometti, Moore and Rauschenberg when he established the South African Exhibition Appeal in 1972.
[more…]

Was I wrong

Was I wrong when I thought
All shall be avenged?
Was I wrong when I thought
The rope of iron holding the neck of young bulls
Shall be avenged?
Was I wrong
When I thought the orphans of sulphur
Shall rise from the ocean?
Was I depraved when I thought there need not be love,
There need not be forgiveness, there need not be progress,
There need not be goodness on the earth,
There need not be towns of skeletons,
Sending messages of elephants to the moon?
Was I wrong to laugh asphyxiated ecstasy
When the sea rose like quicklime
When the ashes on ashes were blown by the wind
When the infant sword was left alone on the hill top?
Was I wrong to erect monuments of blood?
Was I wrong to avenge the pillage of Caesar?
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
Was I wrong to ignite the earth
And dance above the stars
Watching Europe burn with its civilisation of fire,
Watching America disintegrate with its gods of steel,
Watching the persecutors of mankind turn into dust
Was I wrong? Was I wrong?
© Mazisi Kunene
[source…]

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When time works against us
and weighs at the heart
somewhere in a foreign land,
night turns to day, and
the fashion in shop windows
I pass on my way from work
into djellabas, the smell
of restaurants into kuskus
on a market day,
hands all out, stretched
to acknowledge this gift,
walking in the shadow
of African women, men,
with their fear of anchored boats
on coastal fronts. History
in the present. On
a young night that is day
I go inland where spear battles musket,
and I join in the fight on the river
that filled with blood, our phagocyte
impi sieging their laager in anger.
On the metro of the morning,
Le Monde in my hands and
work on my mind, there’s always
a part of Africa that yearns
for me, for my presence, my flesh,
beyond the chatter of the train
needling underneath the capital
into the reconciliation of our lifetime,
before the evening of my days.
© Rethabile Masilo

Related links:
– Encounter South Africa
– Andries Pretorius
– Dingaan kaSenzangakhona